


In a Small Space

by reafterthought



Category: selector infected WIXOSS
Genre: Gen, Iona-backstory, Pre-Series, drabblechap, ffn challenge: diversity writing challenge, ffn challenge: minesweeper challenge, word count: 1001-1500 words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 02:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14945703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reafterthought/pseuds/reafterthought
Summary: It was a small space. She couldn't breathe in it. Couldn't be rid of those dark spots behind her eyes. She wanted freedom. She wanted out. But it wasn't easy to find a way out of a prison cell.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, C6 – write a drabble novel with chapters under 500 words, and for the Minesweeper Challenge (bomb square): multichap with individual chapters under 1000 words, and from a fandom with under 1000 fics to its name. The main character has to either be a character you haven't given much attention to before, or a character you don't particularly like. Your prompts are "breath", "aid", and "arch", and someone must have dinner somewhere in the fic.

It was a small space. She couldn't breathe in it. Couldn't be rid of those dark spots behind her eyes.

She wanted freedom. She wanted out.

It wasn't easy to find a way out of a prison cell.

She could pretend all she wanted. Wear make-up and fancy clothes and a mask. They changed nothing. She was that same, trapped animal deep inside.

Like a cat scratching on the walls. Like a puppy biting at the leash.

Outside, she was all smiles and aglow.

Somehow, it had to change. She had to escape. Find the door. Get out – become something else. Cast her name aside, cast the prison that came with it: the expectations, the weight, the too bright lights that she fought to not gaze away from.

Because that was who she was. Urazoe Iona. Rich girl. Model. Girl extraordinaire.

She had to get away from that spotlight.

Or she'd become a monster outside as well.


	2. Chapter 2

An LRIG appeared to her. A tool. A way.

'My wish isn't a pretty one,' she warned.

The LRIG didn't care. Any wish was good enough for her. Any wish worth fighting for, because it meant she could feed off the thrill and sweat of battle.

But her wish wasn't exactly worth  _fighting_  for. That was the whole point. She wanted to fade into the grey, to disappear into the gloom elsewise she'd become that gloom itself.

But she couldn't do that while doing nothing. She'd been doing nothing for years and that just left her tangled in the strings of expectation: her life, her image – and worse, there'd never been a point at which she could turn sway, or could have turned away…

It was actually easy to start fighting, surprisingly.

And it was almost fun to hide in the shadows and spring on the first unsuspecting Selector.

Her wish wasn't pretty.

Her battle wasn't pretty either. But it was a necessity.


	3. Chapter 3

They sat at the dinner table the night before and it felt homely: it felt quaint.

Urazoe Iona had no illusions as to what being an Eternal Girl entailed.

'You'll be here tomorrow, LRIG,' she said, and it wasn't a promise or a threat; just an observation and, really, that was all it meant to the both of them. Because the LRIG had gone through this cycle endless times already... and all Iona was looking for was something to spirit her away.

If it was a spiral, then so what? She didn't need the battles to make her feel alive. She just needed a timer and all LRIGs and Selectors inevitably hadve a timer, after which the cage door opened up...

And her door was about to open.

'It's one more game,' the black LRIG said carelessly. 'It doesn't have to be tomorrow.'

'No,' Iona agreed. It could just as easily be tonight. And why did she need her dinner then? Her barely touched, tasteless dinner fit for a rich poster-child. 'Let's go.' She smiled.

The LRIG's lips, too, curved into a smile. 'Let's.'


	4. Chapter 4

They won the match with ease and without any more fanfare, she was an eternal girl.

The black LRIG held out her hand. 'What is your wish?' she asked, one final time. 'Selector.'

'My wish,' said Iona, 'is to no longer be Urazoe Iona.'

Her original wish was to be rid of that person entirely, but now she knew better. While within the Selector battles, she'd learnt her body could become an LRIG's vessel... and why not facilitate that? It may eventually come to someone who longed desperately for life, and until then the black LRIG could enjoy it however she chose.

Whether she kept to the persona crafted by her parents or ripped it to shreds, it didn't matter.

'...and so a new Eternal Girl shall be born.'


	5. Chapter 5

'Who are you?'

'No-one.'

'What do you want?'

'Nothing.'

The silence stretched between them: the blinding white girl and the shadow.

'Anonymous, then?' 

'If I must have a name.'

And perhaps she did need a name, as an LRIG. She'd always just called hers LRIG though. Perhaps...

'Or would you rather it be the choice of your new Selector?' the white girl laughed.

'I don't care,' she shrugged.

The white girl scowled. 'Very well, then. Perhaps you'll feel differently once you taste true despair.'

There was a promise in her tone, but more attractive was the arch they stood under: the white arch that bridged the tall-walled room.

She should have been curious... but she was simply fulfilled. Curiosity was for those who had an empty hole in their chests to fill.

Maybe the white girl was right. Or maybe she wasn't.

Maybe she'd find out. Maybe she wouldn't.

All that mattered was not becoming Urazoe Iona again.


	6. Chapter 6

The inside of a card was small too. Small... but not suffocating.

Or maybe it was not suffocating simply because it was new. New things were novel, after all; they had a bit of brightness to them, before one settled into like or dislike or mere indifference.

After a while, it was mere indifference. Her Selector was too rash, too desperate. She didn't take the time to learn how to play and so lost quickly, and miserably.

It hurt. Of course it hurt. But there was still something empty in her so it didn't unbearably hurt. And she was freed from the battles all too quickly, to return to the room and that scowling white girl again.

Mayu was her name. And she seemed to preside over the Selector battles because she taunted her with many a weak Selector... and such taunts became curses.

She wasn't too concerned, though. If her Selectors lost quickly, then they didn't control her for very long. That was a risk she'd taken at first, with the black LRIG... but it seemed to escape Mayu's notice now. Mayu who thought she would suffer the more she lost...

But really, she'd suffer the more she won. But there was a way out of that as well, she found, when the time did finally and against most odds arrive. As an LRIG, she had the freedom to reject her Selector's wish.

The girl was heartbroken and Mayu furious, but that was her choice, as the anonymous LRIG, to make.


	7. Chapter 7

After that, she remained in the gloom of the white room.

It was terribly boring, but she had no role and no expectations heaped upon her. It was, essentially, Mayu having given up on her... and so she was free to watch as girls came and went, sometimes again and again and again...

The black LRIG came back, once. Then she was gone again after exchanging a few quick words. Gone to a girl of her own choosing. Gone to a girl called Kominato Ruuko.

Poor Kominato Ruuko to bear the weight of expectations. The black LRIG had expectations for that girl moreso than the standard Selector. The white LRIG that had appeared just after and in angry tears had expectations, expectations that now belonged to the black one. And Mayu, the girl in the white room, had expectations as well, of the Selector who'd stolen the hearts of her two favourite LRIGs.

Not like her, who'd been cast aside to be forgotten like she'd always longed to be.

And here, there were equally indistinct shadows of people, drowning in what Mayu called despair.


	8. Chapter 8

Eventually, she returned. Or rather, she was returned: to the live she'd once known, with her name and those expectations that managed to change somewhat along the way. Like the way those girls stared at her, like she was the beautiful villain in a tragic tale.

She was an enabler, perhaps, but not the villain. Not theirs. She'd never even met them before.

But she told them anyway: told how empty she'd felt, a puppet on the strings of her parents and on society's palm. She told her how the Selector battles offered a reprieve, until she found herself in another cage but one she could manipulate to her own liking. And she had manipulated it, into something indescript and lonely, to the point where it felt so strange, now, to be Urazoe Iona again.

To the point where, maybe, she could accept to be Urazoe Iona again.

In the face of Kominato Ruuko... She could see why the black LRIG was so interested in her, and the white LRIG, and the girl in the white room... She stared with burning eyes and a strong voice and a strong soul to back it all up. And, behind her, quivered a green girl with a frail voice... and yet she chose to fight as well.

To be a Selector was to choose... and well, she'd already chosen freedom, hadn't she?

What type of fight it was depended on whether Kominato Ruuko lost or won.


End file.
